It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.
--
As quoted in Improving the Quality of Life for the Black Elderly: Challenges and Opportunities : Hearing before the Select Committee on Aging, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, first session, September 25, 1987 (1988)
--
This quote's earliest known source is from Dr Leon C Megginson (see Charles Darwin)Clarence Darrow
» Clarence Darrow - all quotes »
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.”
Stephen Jay Gould
"I am a big believer of what Darwin discovered in the Galapagos, proving that the species most responsive to change will survive over apparently stronger or more intelligent competitors."
John Elkann
Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.
Jack McDevitt
In thinking about what the human animal might have gone through in the evolutionary process, have you wondered how some of the small changes which must have occurred could have had survival value? Haven't you wondered how they could have survived, when, in all of our experimental work every small change we make dies? ... How many changes must have occurred in the human eye, occurred and died, before one change came along — an apparently trivial change ... that gave the whole animal a significant increase in its power to perceive and hunt down its enemies and find its food. This is the kind of change that survives.
Edwin H. Land
Darrow, Clarence
Darwin, Erasmus
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z